“My dear boy,” I cried in a burst of enthusiasm, “have you had breakfast?”

“Of course I have.  At the Union Jack Club—­the Tommies’ place the other side of the river—­bacon and eggs and sausages.  I thought I’d never stop eating.”

“Have some more?”

He laughed.  “Couldn’t think of it.”

“Then,” said I, “get yourself a cigar.”  I pointed to a stack of boxes.  “You’ll find the Corona—­Coronas the best.”

As I am not a millionaire I don’t offer these Coronas to everybody.  I myself can only afford to smoke one or two a week.

When he had lit it he said:  “I was led away from what I wanted to tell you,—­my going to Aberdeen and plunging into the obscurity of a Scottish regiment.  I was absolutely determined that none of my friends, none of you good people, should know what an ass I had made of myself.  That’s why I kept it from my mother.  She would have blabbed it all over the place.”

“But, my good fellow,” said I, “why the dickens shouldn’t we have known?”

“That I was making an ass of myself?”

“No, you young idiot!” I cried.  “That you were making a man of yourself.”

“I preferred to wait,” said he, coolly, “until I had a reasonable certainty that I had achieved that consummation—­or, rather, something that might stand for it in the prejudiced eyes of my dear friends.  I knew that you all, ultimately, you and mother and Phyllis, would judge by results.  Well, here they are.  I’ve lived the life of a Tommy for ten months.  I’ve been five in the thick of it over there.  I’ve refused stripes over and over again.  I’ve got my D.C.M.  I’ve got my commission through the ranks, practically on the field.  And of the draft of two hundred who went out with me only one other and myself remain.”

“It’s a splendid record, my boy,” said I.

He rose.  “Don’t misunderstand me, Major.  I’m not bragging.  God forbid.  I’m only wanting to explain why I kept dark all the time, and why I’m springing smugly and complacently on you now.”

“I quite understand,” said I.

“In that case,” he laughed, “I can proceed on my rounds.”  But he did not proceed.  He lingered.  “There’s another matter I should like to mention,” he said.  “In her last letter my mother told me that the Mayor and Town Council were on the point of giving a civic reception to Colonel Boyce.  Has it taken place yet?”

“Yes,” said I.  “And did it go off all right?”

In spite of wisdom learned at Balliol and shell craters, he was still an ingenuous youth.

“Gedge was perfectly quiet,” I answered.

He started, as he had for months learned not to start, and into his eyes sprang an alarm that was usually foreign to them.

“Gedge?  How do you know anything about Gedge and Colonel Boyce?  Good Lord!  He hasn’t been spreading that poisonous stuff over the town?”

“That’s what you were afraid of when you asked about the reception?”